Writeable CD’s or CD-R are CD’s that you can write/place information onto ---- but not erase. You must have a special CD drive to do this ----- the drive must be a CD writer. A CD writer can also be used as a regular CD drive --- meaning that it can read a regular CD (although the CD writer drives are much slower than a conventional CD drive).

Easy CD Creator seems to be a popular software package that comes with many of the CD writer drives. In this program, you place your files onto the CD by dragging them from your Windows Explorer --- which is built into the software program. You can rearrange them, delete them, etc. – because at this moment it is only the layout that you are creating.

If you have already written to the CD, you must IMPORT THE SESSION (this is the information that has already been recorded on the CD). If you do not do this, then the information that you had on the CD will no longer be viewable. When you Import The Session, you will be shown all of the times (sessions) that you have written to this CD. You must choose the latest one in order to see all of the information that you have written. After you have Imported the Session, you can then delete or replace any of the files that are there. What you don’t see, is that the file will still be on the CD (taking up space), but it will no longer show up in the directory to let you know about it. Without a directory listing, you can not access it.

The software program also help you create the box cover and back for your CD case.

With a CD writer, you can make your own audio CD’s ---- by getting the information from another CD or input it from a tape or external music source. You can create a CD that contains your family photos and other memories (stories, children’s artwork, birth/marriage/death certificates, etc.). How about a utility disk that contains the drivers needed for your computer.

CD-RW or CD rewriteables are increasingly becoming more popular – therefore, the price of a CD-RW seems to be dropping quite rapidly. It looks like the cost of one is now between 4 and 5 dollars.

DirectCD is a software package that allows you to read and write to your CD-ReWritable drive in the same way you would a standard floppy or removable hard drive. It is used for preparing a CD-RW to be written to (the new disk must be formatted before it can be written to). After it has been formatted, then you can write to it, erase files on it – all within Windows Explorer.

Many CD drives can not read a CD-RW. This is due to the relatively low reflectivity of CD-RW media. Most CDROM readers can read CD-R media, but few can read CD-RW media. Since a CD-RW drive can write to both CD-R and CD-RW, we recommend writing to CD-R media if you intend to read the disc on other computers. Any CDROM reader, DVD player, or CD-RW drive that is MultiRead compliant should read CD-RW discs and packet-written discs.

To add a page border, choose FORMAT – then BORDERS AND SHADING. Now click on the PAGE BORDER tab. From here you can choose the style of border, color, width and whether you wish to have the border on all sides or just the top, bottom or sides.

All of the new keyboards have a Windows key (to the right and left of the space bar – has a picture of a waving windows flag on it). Hitting this key will open up your START button menu. You can then use your arrow keys to move through this menu – and press the ENTER key to activate your choice. If you do not have this special key, you can press CTRL-ESC to open the START button menu.

This hoax began on Usenet newsgroups a decade ago. Back then, it was called "the modem tax"--a rumor that the Federal Communications Commission was considering a surcharge on the use of modems over phone lines. But as 1998 merged into 1999, a new wrinkle on the old formula began

hitting mailboxes. This time, a bill was before Congress (whether it was the House or Senate was never clarified) that would impose on dial-up access to the Internet, a charge equivalent to that of a long distance call.

This particular scare was based on a half-truth. There was an FCC vote on the table for the end of January, attempting to make sense of the regulations concerning deregulation of phone companies and reciprocal payments between local phone companies and their competitors. And part of this debate covered whether an Internet access call should be considered local or long distance. The FCC vote was delayed, as a result of the response this hoax received.

The FCC finally voted on the Internet access issue on February 25, 1999. After the vote, the disinformation continued. News sources as diverse and otherwise reliable as Infoworld and Dan Rather led the public to believe that the FCC declaration, "Internet traffic is jurisdictionally mixed and appears to be largely interstate in nature," could mean pay-per-minute access. But the FCC's official release was unequivocal:

"...the decision preserves the rule that exempts the Internet and other information services from interstate access charges. This means that those consumers who continue to access the Internet by dialing a seven-digit number will not incur long distance charges when they do so."

You can find the fact sheet distributed by the FCC that should answer any questions you may have about this proposal at http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Factsheets/nominute.html.

John L. Mica

Member of Congress

There is another browser named Opera. You can read about it on their website at http://www.operasoftware.com. It is an extremely small and very fast browser. It runs on older PCs; a 386SX with 6MB RAM is already sufficient. It is possible to navigate entirely with the keyboard. Installation is a breeze and takes less than 30 seconds. It doesn't eat up your hard disk space either. Requirements are about 1.7MB. The cost is $35.00 --- but there is a beta version that you can download.

Opera is valid for 30 days of usage after installation. After the 30 days of usage you will need to purchase it as you will only be able to access their home page.